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Category Archives: IPad

My 14-year-old nephew has a Twitter account. He also has 1146 friends on Facebook. And apparently, quite a following on both.

When it comes to social media, I’ll admit I’m a few steps behind. Matty might say light years –particularly after he offered a rudimentary tutorial on IPad usage and was receptacle to some pretty 20th century questions regarding a 21st century device. Suffice it to say, he’s there. We’re not.

Still, I have dipped my toes into the social networking pond, if not its ocean. I’m on Facebook, I have a Twitter account (Okay, so I don’t actually remember my account name or login, but I do have one. Seriously though, how much of a following are my treks to the produce section of Market Basket likely to produce?).

But obviously, I blog.

See, I’m almost cool.

My son would disagree.

And perhaps he’s right.

Because, try as I might, there are aspects of the genre to which I still feel an ill fit. Although many of my peers have embraced the connectedness that Facebook offers, I have trouble with one of its most basic premises: friending.

Now that I think of it, I didn’t foresee the word friend becoming a verb. I am old. Befriend make senses to me. I get to make a conscious choice to be someone’s friend: befriend.

Friending is a whole other animal.

And quite an aggressive one, sometimes.

There’s pressure on both the requester and the requested friend. And therein oft lays my dilemma.

The (poor) marketer in me knows FB is an excellent tool for self-promotion. I get that’s where I’m supposed to go; it’s just hard to get there from where I came. We were taught NOT to speak too well of ourselves. The “me” kids came just after us and we didn’t think much of them.

I’m also uneasy with how Facebook has devalued a word I hold in pretty high regard: Friend.

Matty can’t possible have 1148 (the number’s risen since I started writing) friends. Not in any sense of the word to which I can relate.

One of the sites for which I write recently urged me to join its network. A principal of the company suggested I “friend everyone in the beginning in order to build a following. (You can always ‘unfriend’ later, if need be.).”

Good advice, I’m sure. But I like neither concept –making friends with strangers. Or unfriending them when I realize they’re wacko.

See, in spite of the stream-of-consciousness with which I post here, I’m actually a private person. I choose the people with whom I share my life pretty carefully. Facebook is the antithesis of that philosophy.

But as I watch Matty’s friends accumulate, (1151, now)I’ve learned of another trend. Posts to Facebook abound stating more-or-less: if you can read this, you’re still my friend; consider yourself lucky.

Hmmm.

Mixed feelings again. It’s a strong ego that feels his/her friends are the lucky ones and not the other way around.

On the other hand, Facebook purging makes sense when the binging has gone on for too long. Some of my students have shared with me when they’re unfriending their friends. Their decisions usually follow a sound trajectory. And while I might have advocated them choosing wisely from the get-go, I’m all for their newfound selectivity.

Could this be another example of the maturity I’ve witnessed with them through their years at my school?

Probably.

While my 20-something students are rethinking who they’re willing to call friend, even on Facebook, Matty’s friend list is at now 1152.